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Wednesday, June 11, 2014

New Story at Camroc Press Review

Today, my story "Samuel is Mango" is featured at Camroc Press Review. Many thanks to Barry Basden for running the story.

As with many of my stories, this one came out of staring at people in a public place, which happened to be in Boston last year at AWP. I've been told to stop staring, and I try. I really do. OK, I don't. Staring is like reading to me. I'm afraid if I blink, I'll miss something. Or lose my place.

Can you be a writer without at least occasionally indulging in the odd bit of people-watching bordering on creepy leering? I've tried, but I don't have a casual interest in people; my interest is intense. Since I don't live in the US anymore, I don't get the "What you lookin' at?!" Well, not very much. Germans, as well as most Europeans, are perfectly happy to be observed. Up to a point. I did get the crazy hand gesture from a woman once. The irony was that I was kind of looking through her rather than at her. I felt sorry for her in the end, so I didn't have the heart to tell her she wasn't interesting enough for me to stare at.

Anyway, when I saw this little boy eating mango in a Boston food court, he triggered this story:

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Christopher Allen is the author of Conversations with S. Teri O'Type (a Satire),
an episodic adult cartoon about a man struggling with expectations.
Allen's award-winning fiction and non-fiction have appeared or are
forthcoming in Indiana Review, Quiddity, SmokeLong Quarterly's Best of
the First Ten Years
anthology, Prime Number Magazine, The Best of Every Day Ficton, PANK,
Word Riot, Bootsnall Travel and Chicken Soup for the Soul. A finalist at
Glimmer Train in 2011, Allen has been nominated for Best of the Net and
the Pushcart Prize twice.

2 comments:

I'm a total creeper, though more an eaves dropper than a starer. I like to take bits of dialog and build stories around them, preferably about covering up a murder... Stopping by as it's my 5th anniversary as a blogger and I went back and looked--you were one of my first commenters, so I wanted to thank you for the encouragement!